Navigating Leadership: A Personal Journey Through Dimensions and Actions - Personal Development Paper

Introduction

Leadership is an essential component of action and inspiration in organizations. Loads of research findings outline the definition and requirements of a leader. In this present take on leadership, the author writes a personal account of their leadership journey. In the analysis, the writer follows the five leadership dimensions posited in Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Challenge (Kouzes & Posner, 2012). Leadership is not often synonymous with granted positions in a company. Instead, true leaders must be equipped with the ability to inspire action, belief, and a shared value system. Dedicated leaders provide safety for the employees while motivating and promoting the unity of purpose. As a leader, the author of this essay shall describe how they acted while at their best. Besides, the author shall recount moments they received second-party views on their actions. Finally, the self-assessment process shall end in analyzing potential improvement points and how the leader may improve on the leadership dimensions (Kouzes & Posner, 2012).

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Leadership Challenge

Challenging the Process

As a leadership enthusiast and a process-based leader, the analyst projects themselves as change-oriented. In the process, the author always intends to take risks, explore opportunities, learn from mistakes, and experiment continuously. Challenging the status quo stays at the top of my priorities list. While challenging the process, the leader intends to venture out and take on challenging tasks. As a leader, I have been engaged in process-oriented leadership situations that require stepping into the unknown and always innovating, creating, growing, and improving. As an innovator, the leader in this essay has developed new products and services by supporting diverse ideas and guiding their free and learning-oriented implementation. I have been engaged in innovation teams that require working against all the rigid propositions of status-quo. As a sustained challenge, I have been unable to identify and calculate the gravity of the ideation processes' risks (Kouzes & Posner, 2012).

Inspiring a Shared Vision

To ensure unity of direction, the leader is always charged with promoting a value system that allows the employees to share their vision. In the present case, the leader has been able to encourage a culture within their department that enables the members to be aware of the organization's vision, mission, and values. Furthermore, the leader has managed to inspire the employees to share completely in the organization's culture. The members have a clear overall vision of the direction the organization should take. While sharing in the organizational vision, the employees can be bound by the transcendent value system that always prioritizes the organization's good at the expense of individual benefits. Employees thereby view their department's goals and objectives as possessing the potential to achieve a more significant outcome than their ambitions. While promoting vision sharing, the leader increased the hunger for their department's systems-based and organic functioning. Being a department-level leader, though, it was challenging to integrate its vision and values into the overall organizational vision. As such, the leader must improve the department's consolidation into the overall big-picture values of the organization. Corporate culture is an essential component of every organization's success both in the short and long term (Posner, 2015).

Enabling Others to Act

Leaders must work through and with people. As such, they must allow individuals the mental space to work towards organizational goals (Posner, 2015). Enabling employees to act in the organization's interests requires the leader to provide a comfortable environment for the employees. Safety for the employees is an essential requirement for the individuals needed to act in the organization's interests. As famed leadership speaker Simon Sinek postulates, people in an organization must feel secure and protected from internal and external threats. The leader's role is to provide an environment that encourages the employees to be autonomous and derive solutions from collaborative processes. In my leadership journey, I have allowed for open and honest lateral communication in the project teams. Such free communication ensures trust among the team members and encourages free ideas creation and non-restrictive individual and group action. I still, however, have to strengthen my tolerance for wild and time-insensitive idea processes.

Modeling the Way

As is common knowledge in leadership circles now, positional leadership does not earn the necessary respect (Posner, 2015). The leaders must, instead, show the action processes that model the role they display. The leader must be able to emphasize the values of the group through a leading and commanding voice. They must also encourage action and a sense of direction through powerful and charming attitudes toward organizational players. I have been able to display charismatic, decisive, and value-based leadership for the teams I led. However, I still need to understand and direct the diverse characters within the group without creating friction among employees.

Encouraging the Heart

Dedicated humanistic managers not only consider the intelligence and cognitive competence of the employees (Posner, 2015). Instead, the leaders also need to ensure that the employees' hearts are invested in their jobs. They are encouraged to act with minimal supervision when they are interested in the success and values proposed by the organization. As a leader, I have attempted to promote motivation by allowing for the employees' autonomy and providing intrinsic rewards. However, in providing such motivational aspects, I have been limited in the know-how for the various theories of motivation and human needs.

Perceptions of Others

While conversing with one family member and a friend, the common themes that continued to appear were teamwork, collaboration, charm, and decisiveness. The feedback from the two individuals pointed to my ability to engage individuals' affective and cognitive aspects in decision-making systems. The charm and collaborative power aligned directly with my interests in the five components of leadership. The feedback also allowed me to recognize that I may sometimes let decision processes become quite extended and time-consuming as I often take time to listen extensively to all viewpoints.

Action Planning

Challenging the process appears to be the most crucial part of the leadership journey as concerns the systems and process-leadership concerns. As an organizational leader, I intend to improve my risk management and strategic approach to process and product management. I may continue considering the diverse needs of employees while also proactively evaluating the risks through evidence-based strategies.

Conclusion

As evident in the essay, my leadership approach appears people-centric and process-based. While I rate strongly in collaboration and people-based teamwork, time management and process management appear to be issues that require redress. Furthermore, risk management techniques require close and intimate consideration to promote leadership and calculated risk-taking.

References

Kouzes, J., & Posner, B. (2012). Leadership Challenge: Getting Extraordinary Things Done. Leadership Practices.

TED. (2015). Why credibility is the foundation of leadership. Why credibility is the foundation of leadership | Barry Posner | TEDxUniversityofNevada. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmMcSBQvQLQ&feature=emb_title.